Category: Sacred Roar

Stop Chasing the Light: The Strength in Your Shadow

💜 Well, it’s been a while!

The family is doing great and staying busy. Finley is having an exciting 2nd grade year and with the holidays ramping up, we’re settling nicely into ALL THE BRIGHT SPARKLY THINGS! Our most favorite time of year, and kids just make you young and excited all over again.

For myself, I’m stepping my toe into the world of real estate for the very first time to buy my very first home!

Starting this journey, I quickly realized this goal/dream of mine to have my very own home and roots is a deep-seated NEED, for lack of a better term. I wouldn’t even want to call it a goal or a dream, it’s much deeper than that, words cannot convey. Discovering the painful wounds that led to this need has been life-changing.

Would I have wanted this sooner than 40ish? Yes, for sure. But I would not have appreciated it as much, most likely, and was not really ready for that solid foundation. I know, sounds crazy – but I had much more living and growing to do to get to that point.

For this, I am so grateful for divine timing. And now, hold your gasp – grateful for the suffering.

I actually heard Rainn Wilson talking about this on CBS Mornings this morning about his new book “Soul Boom Workbook: Spiritual Tools for Modern Living”.

First of all, I was floored by seeing him on the show talking about spirituality and how important it is to dive into your own soul for answers and clarity (I have the CBS segment linked at the bottom of this writing). I had no clue he was into the woo-woo, but I felt so full of joy to see him using his platform for this. He made a comment about being grateful for the suffering; it was a jolting reminder this morning, I knew I had to share it out.

All of that was a really great and unexpected segway into my main reason to want to write this morning. I had been sitting on writing about this topic for a while, but the Universe showed up this morning to give me a gentle nudge.

I want to talk about our shadow sides, our darkness that balances our light and makes it shine even brighter – that’s just basic physics, right? We need the dark to shine the light and turn it up.

We know it makes sense and we get the concept but, too often, fear stops us from even peeking at our shadow side. Fear turns into avoidance, anger, denial, and even harsh judgements on others.

But guess what? Those judgements come from looking at a mirror. We see our dark in other people, identify it, and cast judgement – all because we might be unable to face ourselves. We see it every day in the news and in our lives – accusations might as well just be called confessions most of the time.

This includes believing and working hard to be on your spiritual path, but then you find yourself judging the spirituality and practices of others – it’s the same thing. We are all still human at the end of the day, and do we really know another person’s spiritual walk, desires, dreams, goals, their WHY in life? No, we don’t.

All we can do is wake up every morning and try again, make better choices, choose kinder words, walk away when needed, show up when needed – the list goes on.

I do have one demographic of lovely humans I’ve encountered in my journeys that I want to talk about. This group embraces their darkness, talks about it regularly, and develops strong foundations for accountability. Those people belong to 12-step programs, mostly for those suffering from addictions.

They get a bad rap, they are avoided, they are judged, they are cast out. But if you want to experience and actually see this work in progress and feel the love they genuinely have for each other – go visit one of these meetings in your area. Talk to them. LISTEN to them. It could help you face your own shadow side and not be so afraid.

I have very important people in my life that are part of these types of groups/programs and it has changed ME for the better. And not just in the way I see those groups, but in the way I see myself and show up in the world, unapologetically.

The perfect Tarot card for this work is The Devil. Eeeeek! If you are not familiar with the tarot structure, please do not freak out.

The Devil shows us where we are stuck, and also shows us that we are the ones who can get ourselves unstuck. Too often we get caught in these toxic cycles and we can’t see far enough out of them to clearly see the solution is in our own hands.

The Devil himself, in my opinion, is not some creepy horned fantom dude whispering in our ears and making us do bad things and creating chaos – “he” lives uniquely in all of us. And we do finally realize that – we choose to either incorporate and embrace “him” (our shadow side), to transmute and fully understand the darkness, or we choose to absolutely fear “him”.

Ignoring it all and pushing it down because we think it’s “BAD”, can make the energy compound and build and then you find yourself out of control with toxic emotions or behaviors.

And most importantly, we can finally drop our SHAME.

With you in the fire:

Love,

Aimee 🩷

“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.” – Carl Jung

“There is a ‘light shadow,’ a place where we have buried our power, our competence, and our authenticity.” – Debbie Ford, as cited in Medium

“The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood.” – Connie Zweig

“The more we can acknowledge and own the different aspects of our shadow sides, the more we can face any residue of shame that might come with them.” – www.becomingwhoyouare.net

**Check out this After Skool video titled: Carl Jung – Love the Enemy Within (Read by Alan Watts)**

The Mother Wound

💜 It’s been almost 3 years (this November) since I’ve physically seen my oldest daughter or spoken on the phone with her.
That fact has been – beyond words – excruciating to think about, much less talk about. I’ve gone through several levels of grief, some of them over and over again.

Just a short backstory – her father and I married VERY young. On our wedding day I was 18, 6 months pregnant, and he had just turned 21. To say we weren’t prepared for marriage, a new baby, LIFE itself, is an understatement. We lived in that Lavender Haze for about 4 years before the Army sent her Dad to Iraq – and that’s where things really spiraled.

I was never the perfect mom, but I absolutely understood the love I felt for her and realized she was truly my first true love in this life. After our divorce when she was 6, it was 12 years of tumultuous co-parenting. Her undergrad college years were probably the best she and I ever had, I felt like we had reached a place where we could let our relationship grow and heal without the divorce cloud overhead. And then she was gone. Right before she graduated, I was silently disinvited to her graduation party (held by her father’s family) and I haven’t spoken to or seen her since.

I want to say first and foremost – I accept all of the parenting mistakes I’ve made over the years, and I ask a lot of questions if I feel like something isn’t right or fair. I always have (always will) and it very much clashed with her father and then her as well as she got older. Being outspoken like this can get you shunned from people quickly. 😬Though I do not have a certain reason behind the silence, I know it’s probably years of hurt and reasons all rolled into one.

Now. All of that I needed to explain before getting to my reason for writing this and finally sharing my personal story with everyone.

I had tried several times to “let go” of her, in different ways. Often, it was ignoring my pain and grief which we know never works! I finally got to a point where enough was enough for me. I really looked at the situation and realized that though this was very sad for me, I was not really letting it go and allowing myself to heal. It was taking me away from my younger daughter who was right in front of me, needing me to be present in her life. A few surprising things happened after this realization, which pushed my healing and kickstarted moving forward again, with baby steps.

The first thing that happened was I ended up speaking to someone who gave me a lot of family information pertaining to her Dad’s family. This information greatly contradicted what I had been led to believe over the years, and I realized that the ways I had been treated over the years by the family coincided with this information. I was completely shocked, but then it all made sense and the puzzle pieces began to fall together. After almost 20 years of being plagued by guilt, shame, and worthlessness tied to the family – it had been BROKEN! This was huge for me, a big step in the direction of healing that I didn’t even realize I needed. That past had been holding me captive for years, and it had greatly affected my life. I asked myself a few times – WHY do I now have this info? I have nothing to do with that family any longer, and my last link (my daughter) is now gone as well. My answer came pretty quickly – this was just for me and my healing. And reassurance that it was NOT all my fault, I was not crazy thinking things were off way back then. It was true validation, as well as a chance for me to give grace and forgiveness to the family and me for believing those things about myself. And most of all, forgiveness to myself for making the mistakes I did while she was growing up.

The second thing that happened was I continued to connect dots and puzzle pieces even further. This led me to realize this “Mother Wound” I’ve been agonizing over with my own daughter has been going on for generations in my family. Verifying this with my mom, though I’m not sure how far it goes back, it’s a strong one. I’m not sure of the outcome of this cycle breaking, but at least we are now aware of it, and that’s a really great start.

Since then, I have found ways to really move on and give myself permission to LIVE and LOVE again. Lately, I can feel my heart bursting back open, and OMG guys – it feels so good.💜 I have missed feeling love and being able to reciprocate love, and showing up for my people.

I was able to have a conversation with a dear friend while I was on vacation recently. I decided to let her see that part of my heart and shared this story with her. We discussed how we choose these things to happen in our Soul Contracts before we are born on Earth. I made the decision to go through this healing journey with losing my daughter, but she also chose to live this current life with a Mother Wound as well, and with a difficult relationship with her mom. Looking at it in that perspective helps me honor these decisions and the way everything is playing out.

Oh! One more thing! You know I want to tie some Tarot into this:
If you know me well, you know that Cows are my Spirit Animal, which I have always associated with The Empress Tarot card.
For my birthday last month, a soul sister of mine made a birthday card for me. On the front was a picture of a Scottish Highland Cow – The Empress card from a tarot deck that I had actually given her in the past with these words on the inside:

🌟🐮 The Empress is in essence the embodiment of the divine mother, ever giving love and life, nurturing all of her creations and providing them with the nourishment they require to grow. In this card we see a pregnant, Scottish Highland Cow. Like in many Empress archetypes before her, her pregnancy represents bountiful possibilities poised on the stage of expectancy. The Empress is the vessel from which great things spring forth. Be it an idea, dream, or goal that is making its way into the physical world, the Empress is here to guide you through all of the stages. (Guide to the Animal Totem Tarot by Leeza Robertson & Eugene Smith)

Along with it, she had a Tiger’s Eye crystal carved as a Cow (see photo below) that I could not put down and she lives on my work desk now. 😊 That was a perfect sign and a perfect gift to encourage my heart to keep on opening, and that it’s ok to love again. Thank you, Friend.

I want to say in closing, I know that many struggle with these Mother Wounds for so many different reasons and situations. This is my own story, and I hope others can find some healing and inspiration from this as well, no matter if you’re the Mother or the Child.

Love,
Aimee 🩷